Tuesday, November 29, 2016

Vermes Signs Extension with Sporting KC

Sporting KC's major announcement today wasn't especially sexy, or really overly surprising, but that doesn't mean it wasn't a major announcement for the club. Sporting today announced that they had extended the contract of head coach and technical director, Peter Vermes through the 2019 season. Vermes' contract was set to expire after this upcoming 2017 season and with rumored interest from clubs and countries both within the US and reportedly internationally, KC sought to lock Vermes up to a longer deal.

After Bruce Arena's departure from LA a few weeks ago and Sigi Schmid's firing by Seattle earlier this year, Vermes is now the longest serving head coach in MLS and became the club's longest serving head coach this past year, having taken over as head coach on an interim basis back in 2009 after the firing of Curt Onalfo. Since then he coached the most games in club history, the most wins, both in league (103) and in all competitions (128). He's also tied with Sporting Legend, Bob Gansler for the most silverware in club history, having helped bring two US Open Cups and one MLS Cup (compared to one MLS Cup, one Supporters' Shield, and one US Open Cup by Gansler) to Kansas City. If Vermes is with Kansas City through the end of the deal he would become the longest tenured manager with one team in the short history of MLS, with over 10 years at one club.

As I said last night, the extension was the likely outcome of today's announcement, and while it's not a fancy announcement it was one that should be seen as a major announcement. Vermes staying in Kansas City is the best thing for the club at this point in time. His record speaks for itself with the wins and trophies in MLS. While the last two years have been rougher than the few before that, he's still managed to bring in trophies. To twist a quote that Vermes used today on the radio about managers some times thinking the grass is greener on the other side of things when talking about other job opportunities, the same is true for coaches, just because there's a section of fans that may not be happy with this move, that think KC would be better off with a new manager, but what's to say that the next manager is going to do any better? What's to say it doesn't actually get worse? If you look at every team in MLS they all go through struggles during each and every season pretty much. Very rarely do you see a team not go through major ups and downs in the same season, usually when those teams are always up they're usually at the top of the conference winning the Supporters' Shield.

In the end I still maintain that this is a good move for Kansas City, now comes the time where Vermes really earns his technical director money along with Mike Jacobs and Brian Bliss on filling the existing holes in the roster.